Sarah
Palin tells us that it is a mother’s ancient duty to raise her sons
and then hand them over to the government to fight its wars.

She also said on Aug. 28, quite stridently, dressed in white against the marble white
backdrop of the Lincoln Memorial steps, that the virtue and honor she
and Glenn Beck demand must be “restored” throughout the nation, remains
untarnished in our “warriors.” In fact, where the American people
have been led astray, military men and women possess the bright, white
righteousness to lead us back.

“I am speaking, of course, of America’s
finest – our men and women in uniform, a force for good in this country,
and that is nothing to apologize for…for these men and
women, honor was never lost; if you look for the virtues that have sustained
our country you will find them in those who wear the uniform, who take
the oath who pay the price for our freedom.”

Sarah Palin at the Restore Honor rally (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Again, the American soldier (Marine,
sailor, airman) is exploited through a suffocating mix of hero worship
and zealotry, long employed by Republican war hawks to demand loyalty
to the state and to expand and protract our occupation overseas. But
on that day, at the Restore
Honor rally for which she
delivered her remarks, Palin and Beck managed to take it to staggering
new heights: they proclaimed the American soldier to be the unspoiled,
suggesting everyone else be reborn in his image. The military, in effect,
are gods.

But they are not gods. They are not
only flawed like us, but we learn everyday that the war and the war
culture fosters the very worst in some people, while it chews up and
spits out others so they become mere shadows of what they were before.

What we do know is there have been a number of high-profile incidents
in which soldiers and veterans have become murderers, rapists, and
criminals, in theater and back home. Even more are suicidal, drug addicted, homeless, unemployable.

There were 14 homicides and attempted homicides perpetuated by
soldiers stationed at Fort Carson from 2005 to 2008, according to an Army
study
last year. While the study wouldn’t draw a direct link between combat
and crime it said a “cluster” of risk factors contributed to the
behavior of the soldiers, including substance abuse, failure of
leadership, mental illness, and “prior criminal behavior and
psychopathology.” And, not surprisingly, the men had seen more combat
in Iraq and Afghanistan than most.

But we’re not supposed to notice that the soldier wears no halo,
­moreover, we cannot talk about it openly, lest we be accused of
“disrespecting the troops.”

This mass manipulation, which began
with our collective guilt over Vietnam and culminated that day at the
Lincoln Memorial, is at the heart of the current social and political
paralysis over the war, it is why the antiwar movement has not been
able to go mainstream and why the Pentagon and the Washington defense
industry can forever bully the White House and Congress to keep fighting
the war, building the weapons and funding more troops for their meat
grinder.

Most recently, we read about a secret
“kill team” that “for
sport” was formed among one combat platoon in the 5th Brigade,
2nd Infantry Division, by which at least three Afghan civilians
were killed, their bodies dismembered and parts saved as “trophies”
by their killers. Spencer Ackerman over at Wired‘s
Danger Room notes that
there are photographs of these now incarcerated soldiers and their “prizes,”
including dead bodies and a dismembered head, and “if the Army gets
its way, that gruesome evidence won’t be public,” like the rest
of the withheld
video and photographic evidence
generated by recent CIA and military abuses.

Was the accused ringleader of this
group, Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 25, a psycho before he came to Afghanistan?
Perhaps, as fellow soldiers have quoted him bragging about the things
“he got away with while serving in Iraq” in 2004. But was he a murder-minded
brute before he enlisted? How about the seven other soldiers,
who, doped out on hashish, are accused of covering up the crimes and
beating up the one soldier who complained to the chain of command? Where
did their “virtue” go?

The media coverage has been underwhelming,
as usual, the crimes committed reported as if in a vacuum – but that’s
typical. The chattering classes, normally ready to frenzy on a hot topic
like hungry piranha, swim the other away.

Those who shrink from talking about
these atrocities for fear of being called traitors need to get wise,
particularly the flourishing Tea Partiers dedicated to smashing the
“tyranny of government.” Remember, the war hawks who throw up and
support the false edifice of patriotism, demanding our silence, are
serving the interests of the government, not the individual.

For that, I argue that Beck and Palin
are hurting the very “warriors” they deify. They enable the state
by engaging in its propaganda, while ignoring the obvious cries of help
for recognition and reform from within the ranks. Palin and Beck couldn’t
care less that despite the circumstances, most are victims of the system.
They never ask how – or why – the military is pushing these human
beings beyond their limits and then dropping them like dirty laundry
when they are used up and no longer useful. They only demand they give
more.

Bred for Killing

Daniel Lakemacher, a former U.S. Navy medic at Guantanamo Bay, told Antiwar.com in an interview
that he believes “the delinquents, the bad apples who don’t have
issues killing people,” are the smallest percent of the active duty
military today, but their attitudes and bad behavior are ignored if
not rewarded by commanders, who themselves encourage the hatred and
desensitization towards the enemy or “the other” beginning in boot
camp.

And, as we have seen in the “kill
squad” case, the Abu
Ghraib abuse scandal, and
later the Mahmoudiya
rape and murders, in which
five American soldiers were accused of conspiring and raping a 14-year-old
Iraqi girl, then killing her and her family and setting their house
on fire to cover it up, all it takes is a few ringleaders, a morally
confused and tumultuous environment, and a few weakened individuals
to go from blind hatred to war crime.

Pfc. Steven Green, convicted of raping and murdering an Iraqi girl in 2006

One need look no further than ex-Army Spc. Charles Graner, who had a civilian record of violence before
he served in Iraq, for the perfect example. A real tool. Though never
officially acknowledged, it is widely believed that the sexual, psychological
and physical abuse of Iraqi detainees there was part of a broader secret
interrogation program sanctioned at the top of the food chain. A classic
ringleader with a questionable moral compass, Graner encouraged sex
parties and other debauchery among his unit, got his girlfriend, 20-year-old
Spc. Lynndie England, pregnant, set the tone and then paved the way
for the abuse by his fellow prison guards. And he took most of the gruesome
photos and posed in quite a few himself.

Former Brig. Gen. Janice Karpinski,
the highest ranking officer to take the fall for the scandal (she was
never directly involved, and insists the orders for the abuse came from
above), says most of the accused were victims themselves. “Not one
of my units were trained to perform prison operations in a combat zone,”
she told me in a 2007
interview. They were scared,
ill-equipped and easy prey. And more importantly, they followed orders.

“On the very few occasions where
the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops who’ve served in Iraq and
Afghanistan have victimized locals, those incidents have typically centered
around detainee abuse,” wrote Ackerman, in a recent column about
the Kill Squad murders.

“Accordingly, the tone set by commanders
has been key. At Abu Ghraib, an official Pentagon investigation found, guards operated in a unit with poor discipline;
uncertain boundaries between guard duty and interrogations; and an environment
where the chain of command sent mixed signals about tolerable abuse.
Before that, the old Bagram detention center in Afghanistan hosted interrogators
who beat
detainees to death
because they could. It would be years before commanders took action.

“At first blush, officers in the
death-squad’s brigade may have been similarly lax.”

There were two amazing series of stories
by the Colorado
Post Gazette and Salon in 2009 that raised the very question about
whether commanders knowingly sent troubled soldiers back into battle,
praising them for their “kills” while turning a blind eye to their
criminal behavior in and out of the war zone.

One soldier, Kenneth Eastridge, was
a member of the 4th Brigade Combat Team (BCT), a unit stationed at Fort
Carson in Colorado. It had a crime rate among its members 20 times higher
than the national average for young men. Eastridge was known for the
most “kills” in his unit in Iraq; he claims he was sent back to
Iraq for a second tour, despite Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),
a brain injury, a substance abuse problem and a warrant for his arrest.
He told the Gazette he once fired 1,700 rounds into a park filled
with Iraqi civilians.

He is now doing time as an accessory
to murder in Colorado. “The Army pounds it into your head until it
is instinct: Kill everybody, kill everybody. And you do. Then they just
think you can just come home and turn it off,” he told the reporter
from his prison cell.

For his part, Lakemacher, who now publishes WarIsImmoral.com, became a conscientious objector after experiencing “the most atrocious things
that I hope I’d never have to see again in my life.” He said he did not want to give into a culture
in which military conditioning and the desensitization of the battlefield
had numbed fellow soldiers against the brutality right in front of them.
He said the conditioning began in boot camp, and then before deploying to Gitmo. “Before you even got there you had a defined
emotional reaction to who these people are and a straight-up notion
about how to respond to them” – and it was not positive.

Gitmo was, “very much the most hate-filled
place I could ever imagine,” he told the Motor Home
Diaries in August 2009.
Battle-hardened veterans who had been stationed at the notorious prison
would say to him, “’at least in Iraq and Afghanistan, at least you
can shoot these guys. Here, you’re face to face with them and it’s
like you’re not even supposed to do anything to try and hurt ’em.’

“And it was out of that where I really
had to take a focused look at what I was doing, my own moral beliefs,
what they were based in.” But would Palin even consider his decision
“virtuous”? We think not.

Self-Destructive and Suicidal

Clearly, most men and women traumatized
and mixed-up about their service in the war zone do not commit war crimes.
Most are victims in the most direct way – they attack their physical
and emotional pain and guilt with drugs (much of the “soaring” prescription
drug use and abuse begins in the military, as
recent data shows) and
alcohol, and retreat into worlds where they cannot be reached and the
military health system is too overwhelmed to help.

A U.S. Army report issued in July announced that the suicide rate is higher
than the national civilian rate for the first time since Vietnam. There
were 160 active duty suicides from Oct. 2008 through Sept. 30, 2009.
This included “accidental deaths” from “high risk behavior involving
drinking and drugs.” The report also put part of the blame on commanders,
and raised the issue of lowered recruiting and retention standards.

Recently, The
Nation featured a story
about Spc. Alyssa Peterson, 27, who killed herself in-theater in 2003,
allegedly because she was being ordered to take part in high-level interrogations
for which she did not approve. Her local radio station in Flagstaff,
Ariz., would later report that “she refused to participate (in the interrogations)
after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage. Army spokespersons
for her unit have refused to describe the interrogation techniques Alyssa
objected to. They say all records of those techniques have now been
destroyed.”

Funny, Palin’s talk about her universal
maternal responsibilities never extend to protecting poor souls like
this.

Palin exploited the fact that her son,
Track, 21, left for Army combat duty in Iraq during her campaign for
vice president in 2008. In fact, she reveled in her status as a “mother
of a combat soldier” at the August rally. But Track is home now, and his experience, whatever it was, hasn’t
seemed to inform or nuance Palin’s fundamental, black/white views
on war and the holy angels that fight them.

Sadly, her ignorance – our ignorance – and denial perpetuate the very circumstances that foster bad actors,
broken lives and doomed souls. Our angels turn to demons, and those
demons become our own.

Beck has (of late?) taken to comforting Americanus UnRead with assurances that "American troops" would "NEVER" fire on the American People.

I wonder how many examples of past incidents need be provided to change the mind of that "I play an Historian on TV" clown.

bogi666

Where and when did Beck and Palin serve while in the military? The mindlessness nonsense they spew is directed to the least capable of the population unable and/or unwilling to discern their thought from the facts of the matter, which is mindlessness. Their audience are ignorant as are many of the so called hero warriors. I'm sure that killed or maimed in the M.E. were congratulating and admiring themselves as hero warriors. Just what hospitals have Beck and Palin visited?The ignorance of the American public can never be overestimated. H.L. Mencken.

Maid Marian

"Where and when did Beck and Palin serve while in the military?"

FEW of the neo-cons or other major cheerleaders for war served in the military. Few of THEIR sons and daughters have seen combat or even put on the uniform.

Not until it's the children of the sons of bitches now breezily sending off other people's kids to fight and die will any serious effort be made to end our military misadventures in the ME and throughout the world.

Don

Palin's son, Track, is in the military.

WTFU

and your point is what exactly ???

bogi666

With the private mercenary armies without loyalties, except to the PREDATORY CAPITALIST WELFARE KINGS, their soldiers will have no reason not to kill Americans on demand.I suspect this is why these private armies are being formed, transfer the National Guard abroad, create the North America Military[ Pentagram] Central Command and international privatized armies all the ingredients for martial law, already tested in New Orleans and weapons, drones, missiles, nano weapons being tested around the world for eventual use domestically.The USA is operating under a military dictatorship and the population doesn't even know it.

Phil Giraldi

Tremendous article Kelley! Why can't something like this appear in the mainstream media? – thank God for antiwar and similar sites! We send our children out like garbage to be killed or maimed in wars that we don't need to be fighting and all we get is support our toops bumper stickers and the vitriolic nonsense spewing out of the mouths of the Becks and Palins. God help us all…

liveload

Back in my younger days, I spent hours reading AAR's (After Action Reports) from the second world war. Then I read the various news reports corrresponding to the actions described in the AAR's. There's very little the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS did in the field that isn't being repeated with an American flavor today. Instant global communications have just made the voices more accessible since then. Some of the terminology has morphed since then, for instance partisans are now terrorists and insurgents, etc. As Stephen Kinzer put it, history doesn't repeat itself, but it delights in parallels and symmetry. Gott mit uns!

bogi666

fyi, about the NAZIFICATION of the Repubican Party. Watching a daytime TV broadcast out of Greenville, South Carolina a local reported happened across former RNC chairman Ed Rollins and asked Rollins why the Repubican Party gatherings uses NAZI tactics. Rollins replied, which astounded the reporter and me"If these tactics worked for the NAZI's the tactics will work for the Repubican Party. Why wouldn't we use them[the NAZI tactics" This was an impromptu interview lasting about a minute and was at a Repubican Party meeting in Greenville I think. The reporter then asked Rollins is he knew what he was saying, Rollins acknowledge he did. The reporter was dumbfounded as was I.

GradyWilson

Beck and Palin, just like John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, are propagandists for the state they pretend to abhore.
"… This mass manipulation……is at the heart of the current social and political paralysis over the war, it is why the antiwar movement has not been able to go mainstream and why the Pentagon and the Washington defense industry can forever bully the White House and Congress to keep fighting the war….." -KV.
And of course the complicity of the free market media owned and operated by warmongering capitalists doesn't help the anti-war cause.

Thanks for another great article and telling it like it is. Until we stop praising and worshiping the killers the killing will continue.

Jeff Huber

And thank you for this, Kelly. Paying our G.I.s their due is one thing. Glorifying them is insanity.

boutet

Palin and Beck are simply 2010 reincarnations of every strident thoughtless warmonger that have existed since humans decided to kill each other over property thousands of years ago. They appear before and during every armed conflict, never fighting, having never fought. As Siegfried Sassoon wrote so well during the Great War: "Never believe that lie, Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." How sweet and honorable it is to die for your country. He was killed in the war.

liberranter

I've said it many times before, and I'll say it again and again: Amerika will never get over its obsession with and lust for war until it gets a taste of the medicine it has force-fed to others around the globe for the last sixty-five-plus years!

musings

Sarah Palin's "restore honor" speech struck me as nothing more than the sort of thing Angela Lansbury's character engaged in as the war-hero-mother in Manchurian Candidate. It was all about political ambition on the freaky fringe, trying to tap into the deep dissatisfactions in American life, where decisions have long ago put us in the financial intense care ward.

I wish this article had been better edited – Criminals do not "perpetuate" crimes, they "perpetrate" them.

fedupandsick

I sit down to watch a football game and there is a flyover. Some marines march out as part of the national anthem. During the game the camaras scan for our boys in uniform and the announcers gush how wonderful it is our they are protecting our freedoms and thank them profusely. It's halftime, time to barf.

bogi666

It's all about brainwashing the public, to facilitate propaganda.

xavier

Beck and Palin are neocons. More war for israel.

V for Vendetta

"Palin and Beck Don’t Support the Troops" Of course they don't. But you can bet your last unemployment check that they support the Wall Street establishment banking-corporatist warmongers. Afterall, that's who employs them.

Whatever happens this should be an eye opening experience for Tea Party & Christian voters all over our great nation.
END

Email to Dr. Freda Crews/TimeforHope.org
We need to see your financial statements. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) is going to be investigated for tax fraud. We understand the Senator was on your TV show Time for Hope pushing his book “Saving Freedom” (sic). There sure is an awful lot of political organizing going on in the name of GOD. The way you Christians are speaking out against Wall Street reform and regulation… one could get the idea you people would have defended the Money Changers from JESUS!

Last warning from Lloyd The Baptist.
"I’m only the messenger, I don’t care if you believe or listen to this warning or not. Recognize the SIGNS… Just look at Dick Cheney, he’s well on his way to that special place in hell occupied by the screaming souls of Benito Mussolini, Prescott Bush, Nicolae Ceausescu and Ronald6 Wilson6 Reagan6.
.
Glenn Beck suffering from mysterious ailments, passed on to all he touched at “Restoring Honor” rallies. Floods, fires, drought and oil spills in Red States. A multitude of anti-gay Republicans and right-wing Christian preachers caught seducing young boys or procuring male prostitutes. Wealthy individual Americans losing EVERYTHING seized by authoritarian Communist Chinese and the OPEC Dictators.

REMEMBER, Rush Limbaugh was struck down days after my last warning, December 20, 2009, post titled “A Christmas message from Lloyd the Baptist”
( jinnbad.blogspot.com )

QUOTE OF THE DAY:
“…mind JAH lick dem with diseases, the most dangerous diseases,
I talk’n like the elephantiasis, and a poliomyelitis, arthritis and
one diabetes… JAH JAH not pleased, wit all dem vices,
I pray HELP us out of the crisis…”
Smiley and Michigán

MFolker

>>>Glenn Beck suffering from mysterious ailments, passed on to all he touched at “Restoring Honor” rallies. …<<<
Original title was "Restoring America's Faith in Celebrities, TV Personalities, & Other Fund Raison d'Etres," but the placards were unreadable on camera.

MFolker

& In re Graner & Pvt. England: Karpinski wrote in her book that they were taking pictures of naked, passed-out drunks before they ever got to Iraq. They thought it was "funny."

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.